Newspaper employee, in the perennial quest to polish his mediocre language. Roaming around Bangalore for the time being

Monday, January 26, 2009

Recession is in the paper!

Firing, lay-off, termination... For us, journalists, all these were terms related to the IT sector. Slowdown was directly hitting them. We, at the most, had expected a reduction in the number of pages and full-page advertisements. Pages were cut, advertisements continued. And we had a party.

Our veteran boss was retiring after his decades-long stint with our company. The top-brass of the company descended from Mumbai and Delhi to our office. Speeches, drinks and food... and the very next day, news of sacking.

Marketing, which they call ‘response,’ team was reduced by 10, advertisements by 8... rumours, unconfirmed numbers flew like hell. And finally, a casualty from the editorial: Our friend, a capable, talented young man. And performance was clearly not the yardstick, for there were underperformers who were favoured by their immediate bosses.

This is what happens when a media organisation has other interests. When a unit is hit, you compensate it by trimming the ‘lesser important’ ones. Recession is really turning big, at least that’s what my bosses say.